1. American History Chapter 9: Life at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
III. The World of Jim Crow

2. Bell Ringer
List the areas in which African Americans have had a long struggle for equality.
Quote on page 332

3. Objectives
Probe the kinds of discrimination encountered by African Americans after Reconstruction.
Find out how African Americans resisted this discrimination.

4. A) Post Reconstruction Discrimination
Southern whites turned to other methods of oppression after Reconstruction.
Poll tax: pay a fee to vote
Grandfather clauses: passage in a law that exempts a group of people from obeying the law if they had met certain conditions before the law was passed
Own property, literacy tests

5. segregation: separation of people by race – (de jure – by law
Jim Crow: Statutes, beginning in the 1890’s, that required segregation of public services by race
Name came from a minstrel show – “Jump Jim Crow”
Schools, parks, public buildings, hospitals, transportation systems, water fountains, public toilets – always inferior
Plessy v. Ferguson: Supreme Court Case that made segregation legal as long as separate facilities were equal (really weren’t)

6. Violence Lynching: murder of a person without a trial
1882 – 1892: 1,200 victims
Perpetrators were never caught
“boy”, “sir”, “master”
Moved North – de facto – not by law but in fact
Race riots in New York City – 1900
Springfield Illinois in 1908 – crowd wanted a black prisoner released to them – secretly moved him to another town – rioted – destroyed African American businesses and killed 2 elderly AA.

7. B) Resisting Discrimination
Mary White Ovington and the Niagara Movement met in Niagara Falls Canada and formed the NAACP (1909)
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People: purpose was to abolish segregation and discrimination, to oppose racism, and to gain civil rights for African Americans
Used the courts – got grandfather clauses unconstitutional in 1915

8. Overcoming Obstacles
National Urban League – improved job opportunities and housing for blacks
Madam C.J. Walker – former servant and laundress – became a millionaire selling hair products to African American women – 20,000 employees
Used money to fight for civil rights
“Don’t sit down and wait for the opportunities to come…Get up and make them”

9. Review
How were African Americans discriminated against after Reconstruction?
How did African Americans resist this discrimination?